


Bright Blaze

by greygerbil



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fantasy Ancient Greece, M/M, Magic is Real, Minor Character Death, Rebel Army in Culture with No Patriarchy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 02:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18188852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: Pyrros thought he was doomed to burn shut into his hut when his salvation comes in the form of two woman belonging to a ragged rebel army, who show him the fight against his home town's new tryant ruler is not yet lost.





	Bright Blaze

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



> This was such a fun treat to write, thank you for your prompt!

Pyrros pulled the fabric of his chiton over his nose, trying to breath as flatly as he could. Smoke stung his eyes and seared his lungs. Once more, he tried with all the little strength he had left to push at the fallen part of the wall above him. What had at first protected him from the flames of his collapsing house would now become his tombstone as the air grew hot and thick. He tried to shift his legs again, but the wooden beam across them was too heavy, and he saw it glowing now in the dim, shivering light of the flames. If the fire ate it away, perhaps he could free his legs, but by then he would probably be unconscious. Hopefully he’d stay that way while his flesh roasted and his skin split and sizzled.

“Help,” he begged in a rough rasp, knowing it was useless. Those soldiers weren’t going to take pity on him now. It hadn’t been for fun that they had pushed that boulder in front of the door of his small hut before torching it; and anyway, he’d seen them vanish into the forest through his tiny window, following in strict single file after their leader, a pale-faced woman who cast one last, blank look over her shoulder before turning away.

He tried to call out once more, but his voice failed. Pyrros swallowed. Perhaps it was time to start praying to Amete, the Collector of Bones, so she would grant him safe journey. He had mostly kept with the livelier gods for his daily prayers until this night, but it was her underworld that beckoned him now.

The clay above him cracked and shifted and Pyrros squeezed his eyes shut, too scared to watch it break and bury him.

“Hey! Are you awake?!”

A voice broke loud through the crackling of flames and creaking of failing wood. He opened his eyes wide to find a woman leaning over him. In her hands, she was holding up the piece of wall she had lifted, muscles bunched tightly under her dark skin. The flames painted a red sheen on her notched bronze breastplate.

“Come now, or you’ll be cooked alive in there,” she urged.

“My legs are trapped,” Pyrros whispered, all he could do anymore, pointing at the beam.

“Fuck.” She turned to shout at someone out of his field of view. “Apollonia! Come here, I found someone, but that wood is keeping him in.” Her gaze fell on him again. “Were you the only one in here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, thank the gods for that.”

Pyrros could not look behind him, for another fallen part of the wall blocked his view, but he heard another woman’s voice huffing, and then the pressure on his calves eased for just a moment. He pulled his knees to his chest as quick he could before clambering unsteadily out of the sweltering debris. The warrior woman pulled him up and out by his arm.

A mighty crash made Pyrros jump. He turned to find the tallest woman he’d ever seen drop the beam that had trapped his legs, brushing the ash off her hands at the leather strips of her armour skirt. She grinned, showing broken teeth.

“Let’s get off this pile before we catch fire,” the woman who had found him ordered, tugging Pyrros along by his elbow onto the singed grass.

As he stumbled behind her, he looked between the women. The one leading him spoke with an accent and her black hair was in a hundred tiny braids in the way of the people from the south, beyond the Shining Sea. Her armour, however, was that of a soldier from around these parts of the world, recognisable even scuffed and patched in many places as it was. Apollonia, the tall one, looked like she had been born in the same lands as Pyrros, but from which of the many city states, one could not say, of course, and the shield she wore was empty of any emblem.

He had no idea who his saviours were.

“Thank you,” he said, shakily, also sending a prayer to his patron god Ipathos in silence. They were walking away from the flaming wreckage that had been Pyrros’ home now. He dared not look back. It didn’t matter, he told himself, what of his belongings perished in the flames. He was lucky to still have his life.

-

The bushes crackled. Meritites put a hand on the dagger at her belt, but it was just Kleopatros, jumping quick-footed out of the boughs with his bow in hand. Seeing her irritation with his surreptitious approach, he gave her a boyish grin that lit up his face, making him seem his age of thirty summers, which the lines around his eyes and mouths and the grey in his dark brown curls hid away, undue wear and tear from a life he did not often speak of.

“Nothing here. Whoever did this is long gone. But I saw tracks that led up the hill.” He eyed the small, shivering man she was holding by the arm. “Now where did you find this one? Under the burning rubble? Well, the gods are smiling on both of us today, it seems, stranger.”

Kleopatros showed him a shining smile, which earned him a warning look from Meritites.

“Contain yourself, Kleopatros,” she said. “He almost died.”

“Who are you?” Apollonia asked, picking at the ankle-length fabric of the stranger’s chiton, which was grey with ashes. “A priest?”

“Yes, I serve Ipathos. My name is Pyrros.”

Both Apollonia and Kleopatros raised their hands to their throat and bowed their heads as he spoke the words. Meritities did, too, belatedly. As many soldiers, she had been raised to revere the Ladies of Slaughter, the Warrior Twins, above all, rather than peaceful gods like Ipathos, the guardian of the hearth. But if even Apollonia the sellsword was paying her respects, it was better not to risk the wrath of the gods.

“I’m Meritites,” she said, looking at the priest. “You were lucky we saw the smoke, Pyrros. Who trapped you? There was a stone before your door, I saw.”

“Trapped?” Kleopatros said, before Pyrros had a chance to open his mouth. “You can’t be right! No one would trap a priest of Ipathos in a burning building, surely!”

“It’s a good way to kill a servant of Ipathos, actually,” Apollonia answered. “The holy texts only say that if you ‘put them to the blade’ you’ll be cursed. No mentions of fire. I suppose they held to that, since they could have easily just killed him with a weapon. He doesn’t look like he can defend himself.”

She shrugged her broad shoulders and gave Pyrros a quick look that was a little apologetic.

“No, it’s true. I only know healing magic,” Pyrros mumbled.

“Who taught you that, Apollonia?” Kleopatros asked, doubtful.

“First mercenary captain I ever worked under. I never did it, though,” Apollonia said, spreading her large hands as if to defend herself. “I wouldn’t.”

Meritites believed her. Apollonia liked to say that honour just got in the way of coin, but when push came to shove, well, she was still here, wasn’t she? And the rebels weren’t paying her right now.

“I wasn’t trapped by mercenaries,” Pyrros said, finally having gathered enough fresh air to speak up. “It was Queen Anthousa’s soldiers. I saw the eagle on their breastplates.”

Three heads turned to him.

“Why would they do such a thing?” Meritites asked, bewildered. “The tyrant queen doesn’t fear a lot as much as she should, but she believes in the gods, does she not?”

Pyrros glanced up into the leaves of the olive trees, apparently to gather his courage. His hands were still shaking.

“Today – there was this young woman. It was raining and she asked for shelter at the temple on the hill. That is where I do my work. Of course I granted it to her, as well as food, and I healed a cut on her arm that looked to be made by a dagger or sword… well, I did not ask. She left eventually, but soon after, soldiers came. They accused me of aiding a rebel and told me I was to admit no more people in to the temple unless they had brought them.” He pressed his lips into a thin line. “I told them they had no right to give such orders. Ipathos turns no one away. So they threw me out of my temple and barred the doors, commanding me not to return. I figured that would be the worst of it, but when I woke up this night at the sound of the flames eating away at the thatched roof…”

Meritites exchanged a look with Apollonia as Kleopatros stared at him in horror, making the sign of Ipathos again to protect from such sacrilege.

“What was the woman’s name? The one you helped?” Meritites asked.

“Helena, I think?” Pyrros answered, after thinking a moment.

“Well, they were right about one thing,” Apollonia said, glancing at Meritites again. “You were helping a rebel. Helena said she’d dropped by a temple yesterday when she came back.”

“I don’t care. I would help everyone, it’s my duty,” Pyrros said, wiping his face. “But if these soldiers want to chain Ipathos’ holy halls closed, I’d rather walk with the rebels, anyway.”

“If you’re honest, I have an idea about that,” Meritites said.

A real healer with magic powers was not often chosen by the gods, even if all servants of Ipathos were taught to dress wounds and mix herbs. Now that would be a helper to have, Meritites thought to herself. Besides, it was clear as rain water to her now that Anthousa deserved not the blessings of the gods if she treated their servants so. It would only be right to bring Pyrros with her.

-

Pherenike thought that the poor young man looked rather intimidated when Meritites pulled off his blindfold. It was no surprise. After so many years with her, Pherenike did not fear her own wife, of course, but she would admit that Kallistrate did not look inviting to strangers. Several scars crossed her stern, weather-beaten face and the strong arms. The worst of them split her mouth and gave her an appearance of a constant scowl. Of course, she had never smiled much before she’d had it, either; and with Anthousa turning tyrant and overthrowing the elected leaders to squat on their beautiful home city Inapolis, what was there to smile about now?

“The tyrant’s soldiers threw him out of the temple for treating one of our own and tried to burn him in his house for resisting their orders,” Meritites reported, holding the man by his shoulder. “He says he’s ready to help us. I figured a priest of Ipathos would be a good comrade to have. He’s blessed with healing powers of the gods.”

“Any loyal comrade is a good comrade to have in a fight,” Kallistrate answered, and in her hazel eyes laid the warning of what would happen if this Pyrros proved himself less than so.

“I am… I swear on my priest’s oath I will not go to Anthousa’s soldiers,” he answered, stumbling over his own tongue.

“Do you know where they are? The ones who did this,” Kallistrate pushed on.

“I think they were going back to the temple. When they threw me out, they said I shouldn’t think about coming back. They’d be watching the temple to see if I did.”

Probably hoping to catch more rebels looking for shelter, too, Pherenike thought.

“You may show him around the place,” Kallistrate told Meritites, after a moment’s contemplation.

Meritites bowed her head with all the composure of a soldier and Pherenike had to smile. Fifteen years ago, on board of a ship they took back to Inapolis after a diplomatic visit, they had met the girl when she’d been dragged onto the deck by the sailors. Just as the captain was about to throw her into the sea for stowing away, Kallistrate had offered him enough coin to make up for the child’s passage. The plan had been to let her go once they were in Inapolis, but Meritites had had other plans. She’d chosen to be their daughter, and even Kallistrate, who was as easily charmed as the Collector of Bones herself, had been won over.

When Anthousa threw all resistant magistrates out of the city after her take-over – Kallistrate, a general, and Pherenike, commissioner of the Theoric funds, among them – and Meritites could have chosen to switch to her side, she stuck with her mothers instead, giving up her prestigious position as head palace guard to live in this damp cave in the mountain with the other rebels.

“You could have told her she’s done well to bring him here,” Pherenike noted, when she and Kallistrate stood alone. “A healer will be very useful.”

“You say that as if she’s five, not twenty-five.”

“Be happy she’s smart enough to know you’re proud of her, anyway,” Pherenike chided.

Kallistrate frowned at her, but Pherenike thought she saw a twitch of amusement around the corners of her mouth before she looked back into the cave after the small group of Meritites and her friends.

“Kleopatros seems taken with him,” Kallistrate noted, dryly. “He’s been talking to him since they came in, and yet the priest is still wearing his robes. It must be a wonder brought by Ipathos.”

Pherenike chuckled.

“I wouldn’t be so sure he’s looking for nothing more than a conquest. The man has respect for the gods and is more of a romantic than he admits to. Sometimes it’s hard to see these things at first glance. Remember, everyone thought you were never going to marry, either.”

“A meek little servant of Ipathos would not have drawn me in. Although – I suppose you never know what is in someone until you talk to them, do you?”

Kallistrate looked at Pherenike, who smiled. When they had met, Pherenike had been a soldier like Kallistrate, the same training yards, the same regiment. The injury that took her left arm had also taken her out of the army. However, she’d never forgotten how to use a spear or the devastating ice magic granted to the luckiest worshippers of the Ladies of Slaughter, among which she was; and keeping her use of both sharp even hiding behind the blithe smile and plump body of a bookish civil servant had served her well. If you hadn’t known her all those years ago, though, you would never guess at first glance what weapons she still had in her arsenal.

“What have you planned, my love?”

“As I said: talk,” Kallistrate answered. “He is here, after all, so apparently he isn’t happy to just cower.” She paused. “Just in case, collect Meritites, Apollonia and Kleopatros and tell them to stay in armour.”

-

Apollonia had expected the little priest to know how to fix a wound, but not how to find a path through the olive grove that brought them right to the temple without the soldiers stationed there getting so much of a whiff of them as they crept along. She also didn’t guess that he’d be brave enough to lead them there along it under the cover of night. However, being buried in the burning wreckage of your own home brought out the truth in people, from what she’d seen, either made them run or made them stand. She’d thought the first would be happening for sure, with how badly he’d been shaking when they led him blind-folded to the rebel hide-out, but Kallistrate had an eye for people Apollonia didn’t.

The quiet approach wasn’t Apollonia’s favourite, but if they could get the jump on them, it would make up for the fact that they were outnumbered. Kallistrate and Pherenike knelt behind the trunk of an ancient tree looking out on the temple, still as lionesses on the hunt. Kleopatros, hanging back a bit, would give them cover with his well-placed arrows when they attacked. Apollonia could see Meritites gesturing at the priest – pointing at an empty spot besides Kleopatros, flattening her hand – to keep at Kleopatros’ side before she turned back to Apollonia. 

She’d never really taken up with causes before she’d met Meritites. They were for people who liked to live poor and die young, in her opinion. Meritites had laughed at her for that. “Why continue living if you don’t live for anything, then?” she’d asked. The merriment in her voice had perhaps made Apollonia think more than her words, which she’d heard often enough. Meritites just seemed so honest about all she did, and not a bit afraid of death.

Apollonia told herself she’d be rewarded once they won, as the rebels had promised, and waved off the idea that she’d let herself be swept up in some worthy endeavour, or in the friendship with this woman, even if she did have the charisma to lead an army off a cliff. That wasn’t like Apollonia, after all.

Meritites caught her glance and grinned at her, crawling to her side. She nodded towards her mothers to direct Apollonia’s attention.

It took a couple more moments before Kallistrate raised her hand. Immediately, they were off. As Kallistrate and Pherenike headed left around the back of the small temple, Meritites and Apollonia took the right. There were six guards stationed there looking out into the valley, three properly on duty, two sitting on the ground talking, another leaning against the wall and staring tiredly off into space. It was this man who turned his head and spotted them.

Meritites jumped towards him before he could get out so much as a startled call to arms and caught him in the throat with the blunt end of her spear. Meanwhile, Apollonia grabbed the heads of the two slackers, who’d had just enough time to whip them around to look at their comrade, before she bashed them together hard enough that they fell dazed to the ground.

As she grabbed the sword off her hip to face the three guards closing in on them, an arrow zipped past her, hitting one in the shoulder. Meritites’ first victims stumbled past her, propelled forward by a kick in the backside, before Meritities planted her foot between his shoulders and brought him down properly while already brandishing her lance towards the new attackers. From the other side of the temple, Apollonia heard shouting and the hair-raising crackling sound of ice growing out of thin air.

No, Apollonia thought, as she let her sword come down hard enough on a woman’s helmet that it rang like a bell, standing back to back with Meritites, she couldn’t really complain about being with the rebels, in the end. The fights they picked where always fun and Meritites wouldn’t put a knife in her back, unless many others she’d worked alongside. And if she was honest with herself, it didn’t feel too bad to lift the sword for a good reason – but thank the gods, the din of the fight usually drowned out thoughts like that before she had time to dwell on them.

-

“Can you hold this?”

Kallistrate looked at Pherenike, who had her remaining hand lifted to keep in place the ice prison in which she had put four of the soldiers they’d found. One had slipped away, though. One who knew Pherenike’s tricks. Kallistrate had seen her face.

“Long enough for the others to come around and help,” Pherenike answered.

Kallistrate gave a curt nod, tightening her hand around the shaft of her spear as she set off.

“Be careful! She always had a better shield defence than you.”

For a brief moment, Kallistrate looked over her shoulder at her wife, who smiled at her, even as her face was drawn with the exertion of keeping her magic steady. Pherenike had loved pointing these things out as far back as when they had first practiced with wooden shield and spears without points, and it was mostly annoying because she was never wrong. Of course, that meant that this might be the last time Kallistrate would see her. If Syntyche still fought like what Kallistrate remembered, she was an equal match.

Wordlessly, she ran after Syntyche. Kallistrate had had thousands of chances to die; she just had to hope today was not her last, as she always did when first waking.

In the distance, she could still see her running down the hill, probably to get reinforcements. Kallistrate ripped the javelin off of her shoulder, switched her spear to her other hand and took aim. It landed two feet before Syntyche, burrowing into the ground. Syntyche stopped short, almost stumbling over her own feet.

“No further!”

Syntyche looked back, dark eyes narrowed. She seemed to calculate if an escape attempt was still worth it, but Kallistrate had gained on her and with her longer legs and lighter armour would only continue to do so. Syntyche turned, taking her own spear and shield in hand.

“It really is you,” Kallistrate muttered, putting up her shield. “I hoped I saw wrong.”

Syntyche pushed forward with her spear as Kallistrate came in reach, but she side-stepped it.

“You knew I supported the queen. Unlike you, I am not a traitor.”

Kallistrate lunged, but Syntyche deflected the blow with her shield and almost opened up Kallistrate’s cover. With Pherenike’s words still in her mind, though, she was quick enough to draw back and bring her shield left to let the tip of Syntyche’s spear glance off.

“The tyrant Anthousa is a traitor to the people, and you wanted to burn a servant of Ipathos in his home. I wonder what Euphranor thinks of that,” Kallistrate answered.

Another step, another jump away from the spear. Syntyche and Kallistrate had long been among the ten major generals of the city, when Anthousa had still been just a minor bureaucrat. Kallistrate knew both Syntyche and her husband well. Euphranor was a gentle, ever-smiling man and priest to the god of travellers and merchants, pleasant enough if for the fact that he had never been able to stand up to Syntyche. Of course, it used to be that she was an honourable woman that one needed not to oppose.

“My husband rules the temple. I decide on the battlefield.”

But Kallistrate thought she’d heard just a flicker of doubt in her voice. It made sense, really. Syntyche was in all her own master, but Euphranor replaced the heart she did not have. Kallistrate knew. She and Syntyche were very similar people.

“And yet, we both know you’ll lie to him about what you’ve done tonight,” she jeered.

It got her what she wanted. With a grimace of anger, Syntyche surged forward – and Kallistrate bashed her shield out of the way, burying her spear into her thigh.

With a scream, Syntyche toppled, and Kallistrate kicked her in the face, throwing her down on her back. She made no long show of it when she brought her spear down through her throat, a quick kill.

As she stood over Syntyche’s body, Kallistrate heard footsteps behind her. She glanced back to see her wife hurry down the steep path, dust rising under her naked feet. As her eyes fell on Syntyche and the blood that was spreading, drenching the earth, Pherenike’s face fell.

“No mercy?” she asked, breathless.

“This is mercy,” Kallistrate said quietly. “It would have been merciless to keep her alive and let her see her husband’s face when I tell him what she has done.”

Coming to stand beside her, Pherenike nodded her head slowly.

“Still, good gods. We’ve known her since we were all girls,” she muttered, quietly.

Yes, Kallistrate had a heart, and like Syntyche’s, it was also not in her chest. She allowed it to stir some pity in her now.

With a sigh, she leaned down and pulled Syntyche’s slack, bleeding body up over her shoulders. “We will give her a proper burial.”

-

“You’ve had quite the night.”

Pyrros jumped as Kleopatros shoved a cup of wine under his nose, but gave a careful smile when he recognised him. Kleopatros answered with a brighter one before he fell down beside the priest.

“It was better than the night I would have had if your friends had not found me, but I hope it’s over now,” he said quietly.

“You did fine,” Kleopatros assured him, taking a swig of his own cup. Better than that, really. “The first murder attempts made on you – I hope – and your first military mission in one go, and you survived both.”

Pyrros gave a little laugh and sipped from the cup, shoulders sinking as the tension lessened.

“Where is our fearless leader?” Kleopatros asked, craning his neck.

He saw Meritites and Apollonia playing a game of dice, and small groups of drinking and shouting men and women, some dressed in their newly liberated parts of Inapolisian armour and weaponry, which Kleopatros, Apollonia and Meritites had taken after leaving the remaining guards unconscious in the dirt. But come to think of it, he wasn’t seeing Pherenike, either, and unlike Kallistrate she joined the festivities for fun sometimes instead of being dragged there by her wife and daughter to support the wall.

“She stayed with Pherenike at Syntyche’s grave.”

The hole they’d dug in the forest wasn’t much of one, to be honest, but it had been blessed by Pyrros, and so it would do. Kleopatros wondered why they had bothered, but was smart enough to know that asking would probably mean stepping in it. Civil wars had no easy conflicts. Too many known faces behind the walls of shields.

“I was surprised you agreed to bless her grave. She _did_ try to kill you.”

“That’s the will of Ipathos. I turn no one in need away, in life or death.” Pyrros sighed. “Though if the Queen’s soldiers seek to burn me, I suppose I have no choice but make alliances.”

Kleopatros wondered if he could have ever forgiven someone like that, and so quickly, too. It was probably a good thing he wore no priest’s garb.

“Then let’s make sure that we will all be citizens of one united city again soon,” Kleopatros said, before stopping himself with a chuckle. “Well, you people, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not from Inapolis. I joined the rebels just half a year ago.”

Pyrros looked at him in surprise.

“Then why do you fight?”

Slowly, Kleopatros raised his shoulders, let them fall again.

“Because no one would do it for the city I come from, and when the tyrant had stolen what he could, he fled into the night and left us to our stronger neighbours, who plucked the remains for parts like vultures.” Kleopatros spat on the ground. “I left a long while ago – there was nothing there anymore. Eventually, I stumbled onto Pherenike and the rest is history, as they say.” He cocked his head. “Kallistrate can be a right terror, but the people here are lucky to have her.”

A lot of good men and women he used to know might still be alive if there had been someone like that in the city he’d been born in.

“Will you stay in Inapolis, then, if the gods help the rebels win?” Pyrros asked.

“I don’t know, maybe.” He glanced up when Apollonia let out a roaring laugh at some story Meritites was telling while standing on a table and gesturing wildly, and had to grin. “Inapolisians are quite remarkable people.” He glanced over at Pyrros, the priest who still had soot from the fire under his fingernails and dirt from the olive grove on his knees and yet still had a smile to spare for Kleopatros. “And so handsome.”

Pyrros turned red as Kleopatros laughed.

A home was a dangerous thing to have, Kleopatros knew – so easy to lose. But yes, perhaps he would stay.


End file.
